Episode 234: Triumph Over 2020 and Looking Towards the Future

Established in 2014 by me, Becky Lea, Paws Around Motown offers mobile services to fit into your busy lifestyle! We come to you and offer dog walking, pet sitting, obedience training, pet taxis, and yard cleanups all around Oakland County. This company and the customers we serve is everything to me and I am dedicated to offering positive reinforcement pet services by people who love animals as much as I do. What started out with me, with one dog, and a dream has flourished and grown 350 customers strong with 20 pet sitters. Every Pet is different and we pride ourselves on knowing each pet as an individual and developing a care plan suited for each individual. What makes them tick, what do they like, what do they not like. We love all animals, all breeds, all shapes, and all sizes. Love does not discriminate. To provide a safe, stress-free, and quality pet care experience for pet and pet parent. We do this through compassion, patience, honesty, open communication, and respect. Biggest Takeaways You Don’t Want To Miss: What were some of the ups and downs experienced in 2020? Becky gets real about the hard decisions of having to let go of good staff and the struggle of losing 70% of her business this past year. She also shares the lessons learned and the amazing positives that never would’ve happened if the world had never shut down. What was a blessing that came from 2020 that you were grateful for?  Becky realizes how the entire experience, as hard as it was, was truly a blessing. How she had to step back and rethink her entire business. What came out of it is something she never imagined. What kept you going throughout it?  Becky shares her driving motive to keep going. Even with debt stacking up, Becky knew she wasn’t going to go without a fight. She explains the action taken to keep her customers, staff, and community going. Where do you see your business going in 2021?  Being awarded Best Dog Sitting and Walking Company in 2021 has been a great start to the year. It has shown Becky that her hard work this past year has paid off but she’s not stopping there. Decisions made in 2020 have caused her to take on new avenues, showing her nothing is impossible. Did 2020 change anything in your business?  Becky shows how 2020 not only changed her business but it also changed her. It has helped her to become a better business owner, person, and member of her community. She attributes the ability of these changes to her experience with Bella’s Mastermind and Better Marketing with Bella. Listen in to hear her explain how. Show Highlights: What life was like in 2020 [5:39] Reconsider customer service going forward [14:00] What kind of decisions did you make on a daily basis? [15:58] I was not going to go down without a fight [16:40] How did you decide on what to work on? [19:33] What would be your best advice for people still in the haze? [22:42] We were on a stay-at-home getting new clients as a result of that. [26:52] There’s a lot of things you can do to train yourself that doesn’t cost a thing [27:35] What have you seen as a benefit throughout 2020 with the Mastermind & Better Marketing with Bella [29:40] Links: https://www.pawsaroundmotown.com/ https://petcareteamtraining.com/ /marketing /mastermind Share The Show: Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review! Click this link –Bella In Your Business Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section Click on ‘Write a Review’ Transcript: This is episode 234 of Bella in Your Business. Hi there, I'm Bella Vasta from Jump Consulting. You might know me from CBS, NBC, Fox, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, or maybe you've seen me speak on stage or read my book, The Four Dogs That Every Business Owner Needs. In any case, get ready because you're about to get your hashtag Bella Butt Kickin' in this next episode of Bella in Your Business. So what do you say? Let's get ready and jump. Welcome to another episode of Bella in Your Business. Today I've got a special treat for you. I've got one of my clients who literally just jumped on a webinar with me last week because that's how badass she is, you guys. Becky Lee is the owner of Paws Around Motown. She started it in 2014, and it offers mobile services to fit into your busy lifestyle. They do dog walking, pet sitting, obedience training, pet taxis, pet yard cleanups, and all around Oakland County. Becky has been in the Mastermind and in Better Marketing with Bella. Therefore, I've really gotten to know her very, very well—through the ups, through the downs, through the excitements and through the not-so-excitements, especially of last year, 2020. One thing that has always inspired me about her is that she's always upbeat and she's always trying to figure out, “If I can't do it this way, then I’ve got to do it another way.” She's willing to do everything fearlessly, or at least it looks like she does it fearlessly. Currently, she's even sporting this awesome pink hair that I wish I had the guts to do, which is another thing I admire her for. But without further ado, Becky, thanks so much for agreeing to come on the show. Well, you should be because you really are an incredible person. And I know that in the next 20 minutes or so, you're really going to inspire people. I really feel like they're going to be like, “Wow, I can do this too.” Guys, I know that we've had a lot of excitement in the past year and there's been a lot of challenges, and you've really had to dig deep and figure out, “Do I actually want my business? And how am I going to get through this?” So Becky, let's turn it to you. Why don't you just give our listeners an overview of what life has been like for you in 2020 with Paws Around Motown. So 2020—it’s crazy because I started the year out thinking, “This is going to be my year. I'm going to get everything together this year, and this is going to be awesome.” And then like two months into the year, all this madness started happening. I was faced with a lot of down moments like a lot of business owners and just a lot of people in general. We lost like 70% of our business, 70% of our clients, 70% of our revenue. We had just leased a training space, about to open our first brick-and-mortar facility. We leased it in February, and we were supposed to do a grand opening in April. Then we had a stay-at-home order. So now we had this facility we were paying rent and bills for—a space we couldn’t really use. We had to eliminate management staff. I went from having three managers to just my general manager and myself, which was really difficult because I had to have some tough conversations with some really amazing people that I didn’t want to lose but didn’t have a choice. It was a tough decision I had to make. I began to fall into a state of depression and an almost shame spiral, getting down on myself, thinking, “What didn’t I do in the past that caused me to be in this position now? I should have had more money saved. I should have scaled my business the right way.” I kept having all these self-defeating thoughts. I kept thinking about what I did wrong. Then, through that, came blessings. We received two grants from the county, got our PPP in line, and our clients were amazing. We had people paying for services they weren’t even using. We had people buying stuff for the future, offering to do online training instead of in person. My client support was out of this world. I didn’t even know how important we were to a lot of people—and how important they were to us. We went from that to starting to utilize people in my industry and everything educational I could do. My debt was growing, but I didn’t let it stop me from improving my education and learning ways to do things. Then, I started opening up to people—which is not me. I’m actually, for how cheerful and upbeat I am, very closed off. I don’t ask for help. But I started asking for help. I stopped being depressed and started thinking, “How can I use this downtime to make my business and myself better than ever?” You said spiral, and what I heard was that you were grieving. You were like, “What did I do wrong? How did I do this?” Every day you thought, “I’m going to lose my business.” When you're an entrepreneur, that business is like your child. It encompasses your whole world, all your emotion. It’s like losing part of yourself, your identity. I don’t think you’re alone at all. I think a lot of listeners are feeling the same. One of the coolest parts about Becky is that she’s brave and has moved past those “I don’t share” walls. Look at her now—she’s on the podcast sharing. What I also heard you say is that you got your face shoved in a miraculous mirror—your clients shining back at you, showing you how much they valued and loved you. At a time when you were questioning who you were, you were given an opportunity to see all that amazingness reflected back at you. We had people saying, “We just want to do whatever’s best for Paws. If you need to charge us more, you can.” I’m not someone who would ever start a GoFundMe, but my staff did—and clients donated generously. We did check-in calls with them, asking how they were doing and saying we missed their pets. I realized we were truly part of their family, and they were part of ours. It made me rethink my entire future and how I do customer service. It made me realize the importance of connecting personally with clients and rolling with change. I started thinking: when we get new clients, we should send thank-you cards. When we train a new dog, we should give them a fun bag. When clients donate, we did free yard cleanups for them because we were so grateful. You also had a choice—you could’ve just hid under the covers and said, “It’s not happening.” What decisions did you make not to do that?